Lakeview’s Shawn Lindsey goes up for a layup during the Wildcats’ district semifinal against Sparta on Wednesday night.

BELDING — If the Lakeview boys basketball team could take back the second quarter of their Class B district semifinal against Sparta Wednesday night it would have made all the difference.

The Wildcats scored just three points in the second quarter and lost to the Spartans 59-40 in the Belding district tournament.

“When they (Sparta) took (Brad) Root out of running the floor we struggled to find some continuity without him,” Lakeview coach Mike Schreiber said.

Root had the first 10 of Lakeview’s 12 points in the first quarter as the Wildcats (7-14) trailed 15-12.

But Lakeview got only a Kolter Schwartz basket and a Brad Hamlin free throw in the second quarter and were outscored 16-3.

“They (Sparta) figured out pretty early that he ran our show,” Schreiber said. “We didn’t get anything else rolling. That’s when they basically overplayed him. He got the ball occasionally.”

Trailing 31-15 at the half, Schreiber tried to get the offense going by putting forward Brent Leach at the guard position.

“We put Brett Leach out as a guard,” Schreiber said. “I like him better as a forward because of what he does offensively for us. That gave us some stuff out there. But that wasn’t where he was used to playing.”

Leach hit a pair of threes in the third quarter as part of 12 Wildcat points but still fell behind by another three points to 46-27 after three quarters. Lakeview never recovered.

Root didn’t hit another shot until the fourth quarter. He finished with a team-high 14. Leach finished with eight but no other Wildcat had more than four.

Sparta was led by Zachary Leach (no relation) with 12 points and Jared Bradford with 10.

Now that Lakeview is done, Schreiber reflected back on the team.

“There’s a lot of different ways to define winners,” he said. “This team when they had a snow day and had a practice, everybody was in the gym. Everybody came to everything. They had been a great group to work with. Everybody wants to win the games and everything else, but they had great participation, great attitudes, practices were fun and they worked hard.”

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The Spartan Spartans came out of the lockerroom at halftime on fire. Karley Cnossen led the flame. Cnossen scored 16 of her game-high 24 points in the third quarter as the Spartan lead went from nine points (20-11 at halftime) to 26 points (43-17 after three quarters) in a 53-29 district semifinal win on Wednesday night at Tri County. “We were in a zone and the pace was quite slow in the first quarter,” Sparta coach Matt McCallum said. “We started coming on more in the second quarter, but then in the third quarter we made a good run. That put us up enough.”

If you don’t put the ball in the basket, you don’t win many basketball games.
The Lakeview boys basketball team found that out Tuesday night, as they made only 12 field goals in losing to the Reed City Coyotes 57-39.

Thanks to a couple of big runs that opened quarters, Lakeview’s girls basketball team had a big win Friday night. The Wildcats won their second game of the season when they beat the Ithaca Yellowjackets 55-30 Friday night in the Yellowjackets’ season-opener.